


Perfect Couldn't Keep This Love Alive

by orphan_account



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017) RPF
Genre: Accidental Death, Death, Drowning, Heavy Angst, M/M, Suicide, Wakes & Funerals, it's the saddest thing I'll ever write, look I don't know how else to put this, sadness so much sadness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-24
Updated: 2019-04-24
Packaged: 2020-02-03 19:17:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18585655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “You--you know there’s nothing you could have done.” Pauline’s voice is friendly, conciliatory, reassuring. And she’s completely wrong.I have agonized over whether to publish this for over a year now. The feedback I've gotten from the few who have read it has almost taken on a life of its own and yet I hesitated because it's that bleak. And yet I'm proud of it, and people have told me to share it while yelling at me about making them cry. So I can't overstate that this is the saddest thing I will ever write and the saddest ending I can imagine to all of this. If I haven't scared you off, read on, masochist.





	Perfect Couldn't Keep This Love Alive

_New York Times, June 15 2020_

 

_A subway train derailed in midtown Manhattan today in a rare occurrence for the normally safe New York City public transit system. Sixty people were injured and three were killed, including Oscar-nominated actor Timothée_ _Chalamet, age 24, who had been scheduled to begin filming a sequel to his acclaimed film “Call Me By Your Name” in Italy just this week._

 

Armie wears his dark suit onto the plane. He doesn’t even have luggage. When the call came in he walked straight off set, called a Lyft (did he? He must have. He ended up at his house somehow), put on the suit. Texted Liz. It’s not the kind of thing you say in a text, but he wasn’t sure his voice worked. He wasn’t sure it would ever work again. On his way out the door to the airport he turned to the living room, saw the chair Timmy sat in at Harper’s birthday party those few years ago. That smile, that goofy wave of his arms. Just when Armie thought his voice might work after all, a sob escaped his lips and it sounded just like Timmy’s voice in that speech, in Austin all those years ago. Maybe it _was_ Timmy’s voice coming through Armie’s mouth, one last time, to say goodbye.

 

When Armie steps off the plane in New York, Pauline is there to meet him. She’s in all black, too, and she moves to hug him, but then sees something in his eyes that says _I never realized until now how much of my skin was his too, and now those nerves empty into a void, you may not want to touch right now, yes please keep your distance, thank you._  

 

“You--you know there’s nothing you could have done.” Pauline’s voice is friendly, conciliatory, reassuring. And she’s completely wrong.

 

Armie’s the only one who knows this. They’d been due to leave for Italy the next day to start filming in Crema. Liz had filed for separation a month earlier and for a while Armie was afraid it would sour the filming, turn the Italian sunlight as cold as her glares. But Timmy’s enthusiasm kept Armie afloat, and as the date grew closer he texted more often, sent videos from the hip New York galleries he visited, taunted Armie for living in “empty, vapid” L.A., pulled up old pics of them together on Luca’s couch in Crema when they’d shot the first film. _Soon, man, soon, we’ll be back there again_ , and an emoji for “rock on” or “peace & love”.

 

June 15, 2020

 

Timmy:

1:15 PM: _You excited for tomorrow, man?_

1:16 PM: _It’s gonna be amazing to be back there with you_

 

Armie:

1:21 PM: _I’m looking forward to it_

1:21 PM: _For sure_

1:25 PM: _The Liz stuff has me a little off my game but I can’t wait to see you_

 

Timmy:

1:35 PM: _Oh yeah?_

1:36 PM: _How badly do you wanna see me?_

 

Armie:

1:45 PM: _Don’t tease me like that_

1:45 PM: _I’m just an old man staring out his window and sipping Scotch_

1:46 PM: _Last thing I need is to be thinking of_ **_that_ ** _right now_

 

Timmy:  
1:59 PM: **_That_ ** _? You mean getting paid to make out with me some more huh_

1:59 PM: _I know a few people that wouldn’t complain_

 

2:05 PM: _wait are you really drinking alone staring out the window_

2:06 PM: _and you call_ **_me_ ** _emo_

 

Armie:  
2:21 PM: _you know why I call you emo_

2:22 PM: _remember that damn heart balloon post you did a few years ago_

2:23 PM: _I’d never have gone that far_

 

2:26 PM: _although tbh it was kinda cute_

 

Timmy:  
2:34 PM: _oh yeah, you liked that eh_

2:35 PM: _well it was true_

2:35 PM: _wait I wanna send you something_

2:36 PM: _I’m gonna go over and see my parents right now_

2:37 PM: _I’ll send you a pic from that same window_

2:38 PM: _since I’ll see you tomorrow_

2:39 PM: _maybe you’ll give me my heart back then eh_

 

Armie:

3:15 PM: _so where’s my pic, emo boy_

 

3:37 PM: _Timmy?_

 

<call attempted; goes directly to voicemail>

 

4:10: _Tim did you lose your phone again or something?_

4:33 PM: _you better not have run off somewhere without me_

 

When Armie and Pauline arrive at the funeral home the rest of the family is already there. When Armie moves to shake hands, his limbs feel like they float against his will, to touch, to hug. He wonders if that’s Timmy inside his skin again, using him to get one last chance to hold the people he loves. _Timmy?_ Armie thinks. _Are you in there?_ When he gets no answer he thinks to himself, _Armie? Are_ **_you_ ** _in there?_ , but then he can’t tell if he’s talking to his own emptiness, or just calling Timmy by his name in desperate hope of an answer.

 

They’ve asked Armie to speak. He was in no state to write a speech, so he had spent his six-hour flight trying to make his mind blank, thinking that’s what Timmy would do. He would just get up and let his feelings speak. And so that’s what Armie does.

 

“Timothée was the kind of open, beautiful soul you are lucky to meet once in a lifetime. Everyone in this room is lucky to have known him, because most people never get to know anyone like Timmy at all. Timmy would say it was the random luck of the universe that brought us all together around him, but really it was him. If you’re feeling anything like I do right now you know how a planet feels when the sun that it orbits suddenly dies out. Timmy would probably make some joke here, or just smile awkwardly and light up the room--” Armie’s voice hitches--”but that was always something he could pull off and I never could. He was so...so... _good_ , and if he heard me say that he’d argue with me, tell me I was good too. I guess now that’s something I’ll have to learn to tell myself. He won’t be here anymore to tell me.”

 

After his speech Armie’s mind goes blank, almost peaceful. The family starts to make their way toward their cars, but Pauline heads for Armie with something in her hand. It’s bright, oddly familiar, and before Armie even knows exactly what it is he knows it belonged to Timmy. He can smell the minty, clean scent and an undercurrent of weed that meant the object lived in Timmy’s series of tiny, poorly ventilated apartments.

 

“He would have wanted you to have it,” Pauline murmurs, her eyes bright with tears, and Armie tries with all his strength not to hear how much her voice sounds like Timmy’s, late at night, low, hoarse with feeling. She thrusts a backpack into Armie’s hands, a shining, completely unique object with a world’s worth of experience, gleaming among all the drab darkness that existed everywhere else. Just like Timmy. It’s Elio’s backpack. Without thinking Armie crushes it to him, holds it like it’s Timmy, holds it like it’s a deflated heart-shaped balloon that will never fly again, inhales and smells Timmy and Crema and love, and as he bends his head to the bag and holds it tighter he realizes there’s something inside and undoes the zipper.

 

Billowy. Timmy still had that prop shirt from all those years ago. When Armie brings it to his nose, he expects to smell Timmy, that tiny apartment, maybe a cheap laundry detergent because Timmy hated doing chores. But what he smells is his own cologne, woodsy and intense, and he realizes Timmy must have been sneaking puffs of Armie’s cologne in his bathroom when he visited LA, just to have a reminder when they were apart.

 

At that moment Pauline returns from making her rounds of the room and whispers softly to Armie, “Are you coming to the cemetery with us?” Her eyes are concerned, and Armie wonders if he’s made some noise of unfathomable grief without knowing it.

 

He pictures them putting Timmy into the ground. Closing the lid, lowering him, saying words Timmy would never hear. And Timmy would hate that. He was never closed. He never brought anyone down. He would have wanted to hear any words that anyone had to say, ever, just to learn from them or smile at them or cry about them. Timmy doesn’t belong in the earth. He belongs in the sky above Manhattan, a circling heart balloon that will one day find some place to rest. Armie shakes his head, can’t even speak: _no, I’m not going to the cemetery, I can’t, but thank you for asking_. And only then does he let himself cry, sliding down the funeral home wall, drying his tears on Billowy as Timmy’s voice in his head asks, “Will you give it to me when you go?”

 

Once he’s on the sidewalk outside the funeral home, Armie drifts. He walks the New York streets, passes Timmy’s first apartment where Armie had put his hands out and touched both walls, Timmy laughing, “I always said you were _huge_ !”. Armie reaches midtown, passes the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He’d spent an afternoon there with Timmy the previous winter, a snowy day when the gorgeous flakes turned to depressing mush as soon as they hit the sidewalk. There was a moment in the rotunda, Timmy skipping backwards in front of Armie, asking him something about a hip-hop album, pausing for Armie’s answer, when Armie couldn’t tell the difference between Timmy and the statue behind him. Both of them had the same knowing eyes, the same smile that said _I love you and you don’t need to ask why_ , the same posture that carried the knowledge of a thousand years and the weight of this moment at the same time. _Someday I’ll tell him_ , Armie had thought then. _Liz is gonna leave me anyway, we’ll have Crema, I can touch his cheek in the airport in Milan and he’ll know what’s been brought up out of the water, never to be buried again. Soon I can tell him._

 

When Armie passes Carnegie Hall he realizes where he’s going. _Is this what it felt like?_ he wonders idly, _being that heart-shaped balloon? Being blown along, not even thinking about the decisions you’re not making? Until you encounter this being, made of light and skill and tenderness, who sees something in you and turns you into art that you never dreamed was possible, but you have to keep moving, you're still being blown and you can’t stop, you reach out but he’s just a boy on the ground looking out a window, and the glass makes it seem like you can touch but he’s just too far…_

 

Armie is on the sidewalk in front of Timmy’s parents’ apartment building. He looks up at the sky, that spot of sky Timmy had been on the way to show him. That balloon had flown through it and Armie’s plane had flown through it that day in 2018, and Armie hadn’t known he’d had Timmy’s heart then, that he was taking it away with him. _I didn’t know_ , he thinks. _I’d have been more careful if I knew. A guy my size, we always break things if we don’t watch where we’re going_ . He stares at the sky for what might be ten minutes or what might be an hour, but there’s nothing there. The sky is hazy, and not even an airplane passes. _Do you know where you’re going to? Do you like the things that life is showing you? Where are you going to? Do you know?_

 

“Welcome to LaGuardia,” the airport speaker booms. It’s dawn outside and he finds that he has his phone out and his boarding pass to Milan pulled up. Armie wonders if Timmy really is controlling things, because somehow he’s flying out of _this_ airport instead of JFK. The staff is unusually helpful in switching over his ticket from a few days earlier, and Armie wonders idly if he looks deranged, sad, numb, if his voice sounds like he’s been screaming or smoking joint after joint. He can’t even remember if he’s actually been doing those things or if his body just feels like he has. He doesn’t get any grief at security either, and at first he thinks they must be giving him special treatment too because normally he’d get hassled for having no luggage. Then he remembers he’s still carrying Elio’s backpack.

 

He finally sleeps on the plane, so deeply that he doesn’t dream. He’s not sure dreams exist for him anymore. Every alternate universe he could have imagined had Timmy in it. He gets on a train in Milan, and when they pass another train going the opposite direction he realizes the last time he was on this train. They were coming back to the airport after filming, and Timmy was with him. Grabbing his arm excitedly, staring out the window, _look Armie, it finally stopped raining_ , so happy that they were still going to stay friends in the States, asking if he could come stay with Armie and Liz in L.A. Telling Armie everyone was going to fall in love with him when they saw the movie, just like Timmy had. _Just like Timmy had_ . _You idiot_ , Armie thinks to himself. _He told you right then. Right here, in this train. You just didn’t want to hear it._

 

The cab Armie takes to the villa goes too quickly and yet not fast enough. When Armie steps out of the cab he swears he hears something. It sounds like _je descendrai_ , and his eyes snap to the door of the villa before he knows it, before he can think _Timmy’s not coming down those stairs, barefoot, smiling, curls everywhere, running his hands over everything. That wasn’t him. It must be the wind_ . He ignores the fact that the leaves on the trees aren’t moving. The villa is still for sale and it’s overgrown with weeds and vines, the things they pruned away in the film and replaced with apricots and peaches. _Even the gorgeous life that we had here was just an illusion, I guess_ , Armie thinks. He leans against a wall, takes deep breaths, and catches a glimpse of their river running behind the villa. The river where he and Timmy swam together, first on camera and then off, first surrounded by the crew and then late at night when no one else was around and they’d had a joint or a bottle of wine. Armie makes his way to the riverbank and sits down, holds the backpack in his arms. He can feel Billowy in there, soft and familiar, and something else, something harder, angular, that wasn’t there before. A box, small and comforting, with corners that he squeezes until he no longer feels pain and starts to feel acceptance. _Sleeping pills?_ Had he _picked these up at the pharmacy on the way back_ ? The feel of them is soothing in his mouth. Round and familiar, like a kiss, like a kitten tongue, _tell me when to stop, I’m just exploring, just playing, god Armie you’re so soft_ . When he goes to swallow them, the water in front of him is so cool, so clean. _God, it’s freezing. The spring. It starts in the mountains. It comes straight down._ They’d have been filming today. Luca would be guiding them and Timmy would be staring at Armie with open admiration, giggling, teasing and tickling him and play-wrestling him between takes. The sky above him is blank and cloudy. _We had found the stars, but they’re not here now. I came for them, and they’re gone._

 

The sun’s going down, although it’s still mid-afternoon. Maybe one of the lights went out, someone get an assistant over here to look at it. Armie’s feet are already in the water, and he’s sliding. The cold is refreshing and if his head’s underwater no one will notice his tears. Everything’s getting slower. Why now, why couldn’t time slow like this when he reached to hold Timmy? Why couldn’t that be the moment that lasts forever, Timmy’s curls wrapped around Armie’s finger, the sunlight falling on Timmy’s freckles, Timmy staring at Armie in trust and anticipation? As he slides under the surface the current feels like eyelashes against his cheek, like a foot hesitantly brushing his, and when he opens his mouth to say, “Tim,” the water fills him like love. Then everything goes black.

 

_Crema News, June 20 2020_

 

 _The body of successful film actor Armie Hammer was found in a lake near a villa in Crema today, apparently due to suicide by drug overdose and drowning. He was found by prominent film director Luca Guadagnino, who was due to begin filming in that villa until the death of actor Timoth_ _é_ _e Chalamet earlier this week. Guadagnino announced his retirement from filmmaking as a result of this incident, saying he felt some measure of personal responsibility and no longer felt inspired to create._

**Author's Note:**

> dreamofhorses42 on Tumblr.


End file.
